IM-Shanks

I watched Gram Chikitsalay purely because of the hype surrounding the TVF brand. That was the only reason. 5 episodes and a lot of wasted time later, I'm wondering what exactly I signed up for.

The show fails to hold your attention from the get-go. I found myself glued more to my phone than the screen, My dad dozed off, mom didn't sit through it either, that's how engaging it was. The essence of the show, a rural clinic, is barely a focus. The story meanders all over the place like it's trying to find itself but never does.

Characters appear and disappear without any weight, Sudhir's father being the most absurd example, popping up out of nowhere in the final episode without any groundwork or explanation. The supposed main conflict hinted at in the trailer, the rivalry with a jholchaap doctor, fizzled into nothing more than a short monologue and a few scattered moments with zero impact.

By the time it ends, you're left wondering two things, what just happened, and why did this even get made? It's like they tried to recreate the Panchayat magic with the same rural setup and expected it to work automatically. It didn't.

This isn't storytelling. This is a misfire wearing TVF's badge to lure in viewers. If this is how low the bar's dropping, it's time to stop watching shows just because of a name tag.

The movie is upright copy of STREE (relating a horror folklore of a village past incident), with a different yet stupid background story about the ghost. No creative brain whatsoever has been applied while writing the script that evidently displays throughout the storyline. Even the ending traces have been tried-copied by showing the return of the ghost similar to what Stree had, but in a very predictable manner. The quality of humour delivered is deliberate and at point seems unnecessary. The end product is outright waste of time, money and efforts, for both sides - production staff and viewers.